


Bedroom

by noblydonedonnanoble



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-27
Updated: 2012-05-27
Packaged: 2017-11-06 02:04:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/413506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/noblydonedonnanoble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was planning to stay out of her room forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bedroom

                He was planning to stay out of her room forever. Honestly, there was a great part of him that was willing to just let the TARDIS swallow up every remnant of her existence on the ship. He never went back to Rose’s room, or Martha’s, because the past is the past.

                Really, he has no idea what possesses him to go in when he does. He was on his way to the kitchen. But then he took an extra right and right and left and right again and he was at her door.

                He reaches out and touches it in a daze. Just testing it to see if it’s real. Because he’s stood here in dreams, gazed at this door and contemplated what the consequences of opening it might be.

                If he wanted to, he could turn around and walk away. Except that the TARDIS clearly wanted him to come, and it would only make him come back later.

                Gingerly, he eases it open.

                For a moment, he expects to hear a sharp, “Oi! Haven’t you heard of knocking?” And he could laugh and bounce in with some news about a place he just thought of that they have to go to immediately because of some planetary alignment or special weather thing. And she’d regard him with raised eyebrows but he’d know that she was just barely hiding a smile.

                No such exclamation comes, though.

                The small lamp on her bedside table is still turned on. A book is sitting next to it, overturned as though she expected to return to it in a few moments. He reaches for it, hand shaking, and picks it up without even glancing at the title. At first, he intends to close it, but he finds himself winding back his arm and throwing it against the opposite wall instead.

                Everything in this room is belonged to her. And now it just sits, expecting her to come home. God, he wants her to come home. She was going to be with him forever. What happened to forever?

                He sits on the bed, slouching and just… staring. He looks at the hat box sitting in the corner, and her wardrobe with blouses and dresses spilling out, and that absurd winter coat that kept her from hearing.

                Her pillow… He glances at it out of the corner of his eye.

                It probably smells like her, doesn’t it?

                The blanket and sheets probably smell like her too.

                Without a thought he falls into them, eyes closed and breathing deep.

                Donna Noble… By wiping her memory, he was leaving a gap in her life. A gap where she had before held adventure and exhilarating memories. A gap where she before had him.

                But that was nothing compared to the hole she’d ripped apart in his life.

                He didn’t even realize how much he had come to depend on her to be there for him until she was gone.

                He had to essentially kill his best mate, kill the memories of fulfilled dreams and the beautiful person she had grown to be.

                His face burrows deeper into the pillow, and if he closes his eyes and thinks hard enough it’s almost as though she’s standing next to him again, it’s almost as though she’s wrapping her arms around him again.

                He dozes in her bed, the most peaceful sleep he’s gotten since he dropped her back into her old life because now he has her scent to lull him to sleep.

                When he becomes entirely conscious again, he drags himself off the bed and over to the book that is lying on the floor, once again overturned. He closes it now with a sigh, and rests it at the foot of her bed. He leans over and clicks off the light.

                Before closing the door, he glances into the room one more time. Dark. Deserted. Done.

                He won’t be going in there again.

                The Doctor _will_ let the TARDIS swallow Donna’s room, and it will be as though she was never there in the first place.

                Except he knows very well that it could never possibly be like she wasn’t there in the first place.


End file.
